Abstract
This work focused on the facile synthesis of carbon nanotubes grafted with a polymer of trimesoyl chloride and m-phenylenediamine (CNTs-MDP-TMC) as novel and effective adsorbent and investigation of its ability in the phenol uptake from aqueous media. The chemical and morphological characterization of the synthesized adsorbent was carried out by FT-IR, SEM, EDX, and mapping techniques. The influence of the operational parameters on the adsorption performance was inspected and optimized batch adsorption conditions by factorial design analysis. The non-linear Langmuir model was better represented the isotherm of phenol adsorption compared to the Freundlich isotherm. The CNTs-MDP-TMC had a maximum adsorption capacity as much as 261.6 mg/g. The kinetic examinations revealed that the pseudo-second-order (PSO) kinetic model depicted higher relationship with phenol adsorption than the pseudo-first-order (PFO) model. The thermodynamics findings confirmed that the phenol adsorption by the CNTs-MDP-TMC is taken place exothermically and more spontaneously with lessening temperature. The prepared adsorbent had a great adsorption/desorption performance, especially during the first four cycles. It can be drawn a conclusion form all findings that the synthesized CNTs-MDP-TMC has great prospective as a novel and influential adsorbent for phenol polluted-wastewaters.
•Statistical optimization in evaluating the performance of magnetic polyamide.•A factorial design plan was adopted and the effects of phenol adsorbent conditions.•The experimental results were fitted to Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherm.